paracyclops 's review for:

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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I've been trying to find the contemporary fantasy novel that makes me feel the same way that I do when I read Ursula K. Le Guin or Gene Wolfe. It's not just the knowledge that I am reading good writing, that there is depth, complexity, beauty, heart, erudition and poetry in the pages. It's a sense that I am being somehow tricked. I can't quite see how it's done. I'm in another place altogether, breathing its air, moving to it's music, and in contrast to other writers that I love, other great literary worldbuilders, I can't quite tell how I got there. Gene Wolfe sets out quite deliberately to mislead his readers, but it's not that—Le Guin doesn't write in that way, but she achieves the same effect. There's simply a magic to the writing, that produces experiences beyond anything that can be ascribed to the techniques I can see in use. It's like standing in front of a Mark Rothko painting, or listening to John Coltrane—meanings are communicated that go beyond signification, beyond artistic vocabulary, that belong to the domain of the sublime. With Marlon James, I've finally found that.

And having said that, I'm not going to spend a great deal of time talking about how this book is made. The narrative is built from a distinctive, pungent first-person voice, which sees its world as partially as any of us see our own. That world is built from West African raw materials, in the same way that much epic fantasy is built from Western European ingredients. It's a bloody, tragic, sexually explicit tale, full of all-consuming passions and unspeakable cruelties. Its magic and monsters all have the feeling of being drawn from real mythologies, and real mystical traditions—how closely they follow the folklore James draws on, I have absolutely no clue, but he has clearly imagined himself into a worldview where these things would seem possible. This is, I have to say, as rare as hen's teeth among fantasy writers. Black leopard red wolf is a tissue of meticulously crafted, ingeniously interlocking linguistic puzzle pieces, a phantasmagoric kaleidoscope of experiences and sensations, and one of the best books I've read.